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Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Windows and Mac versions differ

Written by FB

Nov 24, 2009

I bought a Macbook Pro because I found it be lighter for business travel than my heavy IBM Thinkpad. I bought MS Office for the Mac thinking it was identical to the very powerful version for Windows. I was wrong and in subtle but important ways.

For example, it is not possible to conditionally format more than three items in Excel unlike Windows (Home Office 2007). This is a real pain. Even more of a pain is the Acrobat conversion facility in Word does not convert the text document into one file if there are landscape an portrait sections combined in one doc. It outputs as many pdf files as there are sections. Thank goodness I have the Windows version of Office and it outputs the pdf file perfectly. The conversion works fine in Powerpoint.
As part of my work habits I routinely use styles in Word. However, when I try to convert a Word 2007 document to Word 95 the conversion introduces what appears to be a bug: second lines of paragraphs have an extra bit of hanging indent than the first line. There is nothing I can do to make this conversion work properly. But guess what? It works perfectly in Windows. Finally, there is no Outlook for the Mac. Entourage will not work with Exchange Server unless you buy the Pro version of Office at significantly more money.
Otherwise, the app works fine, but these issues should not happen. I fail to understand why Apple would not work with Microsoft to ensure 100% compatibility between Mac and Windows versions of Office.

16 of 17 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Hard at first but i fixed the problem

Written by LA from bronx

Nov 21, 2009

i got my macbook pro in July 2009 and i bought office 2008 in august. At first, i was having problems with it. Everytime i loaded it, it said something about troubleshooting problems. what i did is i re-installed it and now it works perfectly.

9 of 12 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

No longer actively supported by Microsoft

Written by BS from prunedale

Nov 19, 2009

Bad enough that with Office 2008, Microsoft consciously disabled the ability to move Organizer data from the PC into Entourage (Organizer replacement) but it also has numerous bugs, including not being able to use symbols in a document, that have persisted for years but no patches are provide.

Obvious that Microsoft has pulled the plug on development or support for this product.

20 of 30 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

It's okay

Written by RY from McLean

Nov 17, 2009

I am a Windows user who just switched to a Mac. This is probably why I went for Office instead of iWork. I'll break this down into four groups: Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and Entourage.

Word is as awesome on a Mac as it is on a PC. It's pretty much the same except there are some features missing, such as the booklet maker, but Microsoft added more features to make up for that like the notebook layout view. Overall, Word is a 10/10.

Powerpoint... meh. I am used to the 2003 version, so switching to both a Mac AND a new version is tough. It's a bit more difficult to use (for me, at least) and the animations are not as varied, but overall this is a 7/10 application.

Excel is even better on a Mac than on a PC. The tools are around the window instead of on top of the window which creates a more user friendly experience. 10/10

Entourage is the main reason that I gave office a 4/5. I don't know why they bothered to include it in Office. After all, Mac OS X Snow Leopard already has an awesome mail app. If they put in Office, at least make it good. It has a whole bunch of useless features that make me feel like I HAVE to use it. It's probably just me, but I just plain hate it. However, it does work, so 5/10

Now, another reason I gave Office a 4/5 is the lack of Publisher! I had to go back to my old eMachines to get my brochure done. If you are reading this Microsoft, PLEASE add Publisher!

66 of 68 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

A Step Backwards

Written by DB

Nov 16, 2009

Too many useless gizmos. I wish it had simply let me create my own tool bars rather than giving me what it thought best. Speaking of which, its self correcting functions are opt-out rather than choose, and trying to find the opt-out controls is frustrating. The graphics portion is much worse than the older Word versions. Pure frustration and torture to use. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is that, ...well..., I made a mistake.

10 of 16 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Use free software

Written by JS from HOUSTON

Nov 16, 2009

OpenOffice is free and it works great on the Mac - compatible with MS Office and works like a champ -

38 of 45 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Useless!

Written by GR from Cambridge

Nov 15, 2009

Completely useless. I cannot work on my files because it keeps crashing! I wish I could give this product no stars at all!

10 of 16 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Save yourself the headache and don't by!!!

Written by RS from Wichita

Nov 14, 2009

As a student I have been using office for years. I recently bought the Office 2008 (I was using 2004) online as I wanted to stay with the same program that my school and professors use. I downloaded the suite just fine and it worked for about a day. Then it decided that it did not like being on a Mac even thought it was Office FOR Mac. I call Microsoft and talked with the techs. Went through a bunch of steps including starting it in safe mode and deleting files. They finally told me that they did not know what was wrong and that it must be an Apple front issue and to call Apple. I called and the tech at Apple was really nice and did what he could without making me pay $50 more dollars to be told that I would have to reinstall my operating system. Seriously!!! Reinstall my operation system without a guarantee that Office would work!!!!! No product is worth that headache!!!! I asked for a refund so now I have no choice but to switch to iworks which yes does save as a word file but does not hold the settings and formatting of a document. So now I have to go to a PC fix the document before giving it to my professors. I don't know who to be more frustrated with Microsoft for saying that it's for Mac or Apple for wanting me to reinstall my operating system. Please one of you fix this!

16 of 22 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Doesn't Work

Written by MB from Raleigh

Nov 12, 2009

This product doesn't work remotely as well as any Mac software and doesn't work as well as Office does on a PC. The only time my Macbook has ANY problems is when this Microsoft product is running on it.

8 of 13 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Next Time I will get iwork

Written by JW from Indianapolis

Nov 11, 2009

I have had office 2008 on my computer for a little over a year and I am disappointed. The updates are huge on memory and make little difference. Word will take forever to bring up and often freezes like with powerpoint. If I didn't need this software for college it would be deleted in an instant.

6 of 10 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Just another garbage

Written by FM from Santana do Parnaiba

Nov 11, 2009

This is just another Microsoft bad experience. I've experienced a lot of crashes and lost too much information in my Excel spreadsheets. Hated it! I'm using iWork instead and I am much happier now. iWork is cheaper and works perfectly fine.

7 of 13 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Is a more accurate proofreader than Pages.

Written by PM from Las Vegas

Nov 10, 2009

As a straight "A" student in High school, Office 2008 is a much better proofreader than Pages. I have both, Pages and Office. Pages has it's neatness, however Office is a standard and catches much more grammatical errors than Pages. Office is just as fast as Pages on my MacBook Pro. As for typing anything to be right, I am afraid to use Pages because of it's great lenience, there isn't any options on how to check what you type. Page is always on casual mode, where as Office lets your customize how it checks. If your a writer, get Office.

7 of 13 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

confusing

Written by HA from Dunn Loring

Nov 6, 2009

i believe that office for pc is much better & easier ... hopefully that office 2010 for pc and mac will have the same look&feel - regards, h.

11 of 20 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Excellent product for Home use

Written by PR from Maple

Nov 2, 2009

I'm a fan of most things Apple, so I'm a bit sad to say I've found Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition to be an excellent product. Having used it now for a few months, it hasn't crashed at all and has far exceeded the functional capabilities I found to be within iWork. I notice though on my low-end iMac that it's a bit of a heavier load on the computer than iWork, but once it's launched it's been great.

26 of 28 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Good product except all the issues with sync

Written by KD

Nov 1, 2009

Microsoft Office is generally a good product. The component I use the most is Entourage and I find it meets my needs 100%. However, its one major downfall is the issue with sync. Sync from Entourage to any handheld device is flaky at best and distratous at worst. In the almost 2 years since its release Microsoft has done nothing to rectify this. Sync's can go a long fine for a while only for you to suddenly find bizarre sync results to your iPhone, BlackBerry or what have you. Dups are common, data loss and potentially even database corruption can happen. As a result, 2008 requires constant backups so that if something serious goes wrong you can revert to a backup. This however, is overall a great nuisance, time consuming and can be at times embarrassing if you have to ask a client for information collected.

Putting this aside, Entourage is probably the most powerful information manager for the Mac providing robust searching, a great e-mail client, linking, categorizing, project management and more. If only they'd fix sync bar none this would be the best.

7 of 14 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Great!!

Written by ER from PEMBROKE PINES

Nov 1, 2009

this was a very good product my family has 2 Macbook Pro's and 1 Macbook and we've used up our 3 but it was a very good product and it was very simple to install the only thing was when we got the new Macbook with snow leopard it took a little longer but besides that it is a great product from Apple :)

9 of 14 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

Entourage (outlook), Word, PPT and Excel on MAC!!!

Written by SJ from Shrewsbury

Oct 31, 2009

I have been using Office 2008 for Mac (Snow Leopard) for quite some time. It works great!

Entourage works well with exchange but I have not used it with other mail protocols. Calendar looks similar to Outlook. Although its easy to recognize a mail from Entourage Vs Outlook.

I am not a heavy user of Word/Excel or PPT on Mac. I use it for reading the documents than creating one. So far so good. Office interface is different than the one you see in Windows. Its well integrated into Mac and suits well with OS X applications.

8 of 11 people found this useful

Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition

iWork Reigns! Sorry Microsoft strikes again... :(

Written by CM

Oct 29, 2009

I am not a person who likes to talk negative so I won't. I will tell you that iWork is cleaner, easier to use, faster and works with all formats that Office 08 has. Office 08 is reliving Windows with it's constant updates, the confusing way to format, change text style or font. Excel is much better in Office 08 then iWork. Personally I left Windows for the same reason I left Office 08... well... i only use it when i have to. Entourage is confusing... it's just so much hassle to learn the "Mac" version of Windows, it has lousy templates and so few of them... not very happy. ALSO iWork has an option of uploading your docs to iWork.com, Office 08? Still haven't found anything like that... if you must then do it.

Now!!! If typing and EXTREME editing is your thing then YES office 08 is good. If your like me, a business man and student. Don't need to publish a novel... i'd stick with iWork. Good luck!

11 of 15 people found this useful